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EDITOR'S NOTE
I'm going to retire at the end of next year, inshallah. As I said a while ago, 25 years will be enough.
We—the Board and I—have begun to search for my successor. As we began to plan for succession, some Board members wondered if ZYZZYVA wasn't too personal an enterprise to be continued by someone else, whether it shouldn't be allowed to disappear when I did.
Cooler heads prevailed, however, and we decided that ZYZZYVA did have institutional values that would be worth sustaining, if we could.
Whoever takes over will have to be different, will have to take a new direction, because the times have changed.
In 1985, it really did seem there was a niche for ZYZZYVA, because the West Coast was deprived-we didn't have a great litmag; our writers were underrepresented; our writing programs were, for the most part, underdeveloped. We needed a showcase and a champion.
Those needs are not as pressing anymore. And the paradigm has shifted; the digital revolution marches on.
I once responded to a Paris Review questionnaire about “the key ingredients needed to keep a literary magazine afloat.” Taking its editor George Plimpton as my model, I declared: An independent income is the basic flotation device. Having the office in the editor's basement reduces rent and the editor's commute. Also helpful because, even if the budget remains modest, attracting money is key: good looks, charm, guts, a thick skin, a sense of humor, a good work ethic, luck, and the ability to spot and nurture talent.
So let's, for the moment, use that as a job description for a successor—with the addition that a serious candidate ought to live in our hood already, know the literary community and be known by it.
If you have someone in mind, please let us know.
H.J.
FIRST TIME IN PRINT
Matthew Bell: Blood Groove (story)
Natty Bokenkamp: Our Savannah (story)
Susan Calvillo: C[ase] 88 (poem)
Alexander Carver: Callback Hell (story)
Kaz Maslanka: Prometheus’s Epistle to Job
Tracy Pitts: Red and Bare (prose poems)
Caveh Zahedi/Jason Atkinson: Thomas the Obscure (screenplay)
FICTION
Flavian Mark Lupinetti: The Eichmann Interview
Justin St. Germain: Tortolita
NONFICTION
Guillermo Gómez-Peña: Postcards from a Bohemian Theme Park
Stephen D. Gutierrez: The Margin King
Laura Moriarty: Outlaws, Lone Wolves, and Made Poets
POETRY
Stephanie Brown: Beach Glass
Dana Goodyear: Valentine for a Quiet Man
Lee Herrick: My California
Clare Marie Myers: Teaching the Sentence and the Paragraph
Denise Newman: The New Make Believe
Sarah Seybold: Rusty Water
Austin Smith: Recollection
.......................The Blind Painter in Autumn
.......................The Undertaker
Megan Snyder-Camp: Summer House
Vuong Quoc Vu: No. 5
............................Cà Mau
............................Fried Chicken
............................A Tale of Fire
Works on Paper Originally in B&W
Deric Carner, 52, 54, 56, 59, 62; Kyle Field, 92; Ann Gale, 141-142;
Matt Gil, 82, 84; John Houck, 148; Keiko Ishihara, 40;
Tim Lowly, 145; Nancy Macko, 124; Linda Masotti, 42;
Nickolas Mohanna, 64; Ethan Murrow, 87-91;
Meridel Rubenstein, 118; Lezley Saar, 120; Larry Thomas, 98;
Andrew Tosiello, 112-114; Brian Wasson, 30; Leigh Wells, 150;
Noah Wilson, 38-39; Zack Zdrale, 127-128
Covers
Front: Chris Kitze, Chinatown, 2007, inkjet print on aluminum,
59 1/2 x 41 1/2 inches, courtesy: Scott Richards Contemporary Art, San Francisco
Back: Liz Hickock, Jell-O Mold #1, 2008, C-Print, 24 x 16 inches & 45 x 30 inches, courtesy: the artist
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